HAM chief Santosh Kumar Suman quits Nitish govt ahead of Opposition meet

Suman's resignation comes amid reports that the JD(U) has been pressuring ham to merge with it

Ahead of an Opposition meeting in Patna later this month, Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) on Tuesday served a punch on the Grand Alliance in Bihar by pulling out its minister Santosh Kumar Suman, who is the son of Jiten Ram Manjhi, from the Nitish Kumar government, to “safeguard the party's existence” amid alleged pressure from JD(U) to merge with it.

Suman, who is also the national president of the party, resigned as the Minister for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Welfare from the Nitish government, alleging that his party's identity and existence were in danger as the JD(U) was pressuring it to merge with it.

Jiten Manjhi, the father of Suman and a former Bihar Chief Minister who founded HAM after splitting with JD(U), had been upping the ante in the recent months, demanding five Lok Sabha seats from the Grand Alliance in 2024 elections. He also held a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah in April.

“The existence of my party was under threat. I did this to protect it,” Suman told reporters in Patna after meeting senior JD(U) minister Vijay Chaudhary to explain his point.

At the same time, he said, HAM was not pulling out of the Grand Alliance and not in conversation with anyone at present. “It is for the Chief Minister to decide whether we should be kept in the Mahagathbandhan or expelled. We will decide accordingly,” he said.

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Asked whether his party would attend the Opposition meeting being hosted by Nitish in Patna on June 23, he said, "when we were not even invited, when we were not even recognised as a party, how would we have been invited?"

There is no information about Nitish accepting the resignation while JD(U) sources said that even if the HAM with four MLAs walked out of the alliance, there would not be any danger to the coalition government.

The BJP immediately latched on to the development with the saffron party's national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain saying that the resignation was “proof of the chasm” that exists in the Grand Alliance. “The alliance has been rejected by the people and it will become evident in the Lok Sabha polls next year and culminate in the defeat of the Mahagathbandhan in the Assembly elections a year later,” he said.

The RJD sought to view it as Manjhi's pressure tactics, for which he is "well-known". RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari said this is a move HAM will regret in future.

While Manjhi had played down the political significance of his meeting with Shah, which he said was for demanding Bharat Ratna for Bihar icons like Dasarath Manjhi, Karpuri Thakur and Srikrishna Sinha, BJP leaders have been insisting that there will be political changes in the state in the months to come.

There has been speculation that Manjhi was upset with Nitish over the JD(U)'s reported attempts to pressure HAM into a merger. Manjhi had walked out of the JD(U) to form HAM after Nitish took back Chief Minister's post from Majhi.

If Manjhi walks out, this would be second instance of a prominent leader severing ties with the Grand Alliance in recent months, the first being JD(U)'s Upendra Kushwaha, who has courted the NDA.